Madden 25 Owner Mode - Negative Funds

So I am playing as the Vikings and my only highly paid players are Christian Ponder, Adrian Peterson, Randy Moss, and Matt Kalil.

I moved to England and the city paid over 50% of my new stadium fees.

Somehow I am $433 million in the red in funds and it adds another $10-$50 million each week and it said if I didn't fix it by the end of the year I would be forced to retire.

I don't sign any players through the year, I don't give signing bonuses, and I don't just randomly release players so I don't know how this could've possibly happened after a 4-0 preseason, 16-0 regular season, and 3-0 postseason.

If it helps any here are my OWNER section stats:

My Team Success, Popularity, and Stadium are ranked 1st.

My Concession and Merchandise are ranked 2nd.

My Tickets are ranked 6th.

My staff is ranked 8th.

My prices areas follows:

$480 for Suite Tickets (3271 seats), $230 for Club Tickets (12558 seats), $125 for Mezzanine Tickets (22456 seats), and $80 for Upper Level Tickets (38669 seats). They are sold in full every home game.

So overall I make around $20,000,000 a week but somehow it says I spend $25,000,000 a week. I don't know how that happens when the game said ONLY signing bonuses are taken out of Owner Funds and I pay less than $10,000,000 a year in bonuses and my stadium lease is just $1,110,000 a week along with $240,000 in staff salaries a week.

Can anyone help me or should I just call it quits with this owner at the end of the year and start fresh with a new one?

Re: Madden 25 Owner Mode - Negative Funds

Your doing great with your franchise! The problem is that you said that you released some players. When you release players you get penalized like 100k more than the cap room cleared, so if you want to resolve the problem try turning off the salary cap then turn back on when you fundingIs outta the -35 m (example) and more like around 20 M. Another plan is to just deal with the roster you have now and win a superbowl which is gonna give you enough money with the march and tics to regain the penalized money. I've experienced how you feel and now my Toronto Mounties are all negative fund free

Re: Madden 25 Owner Mode - Negative Funds

I think the problem lies in how much money you had going into the new stadium deal, I don't know how much it cost for you to relocate, but the remaining funds is extremely important. Remember NFL franchises are worth into the billions, so the expection is that you may have to play a couple seasons to save the money and then make the move.

I can talk happy as a Jets fan since Met Life is the biggest money maker there is in the largest market there is & I am currently finishing my 2nd season, going into my 3rd with over $140 million. I hear Dez Bryant will be a free agent, I hope he enjoys a contract made up of 60-80% salary bonuses.

Re: Madden 25 Owner Mode - Negative Funds

Hey..I'm having the same problem. Finished my first season and I'm 3 players short starting the new preseason. Says I'm 1.86M in the red and I can't sign any free agents/make trades until it Says funds Is 0$. I've turned the cap off and now it can't be switched back. Tried a new owner and my built team Is locked and my user team, my team Is also locked. So..Do I Just play the preseason 3 players short and build the money through my 2 home games then go back to free agency?? Is that possible? Just want to keep playing and up the difficulty. Thanks for any help on my situation.

Re: Madden 25 Owner Mode - Negative Funds

Anybody whos having problems with owner mode and negative funds I have one thing u can do that will help. Same thing happened to me so what u can do is go to settings in ur owner mode franchise go to user teams and just create a new character. You'll continue exactly where u left off same roster same everything except your funds will go back to square one and you'll either be at 0 funds or actaully be a few million in the plus...let me know it worked for me

Re: Madden 25 Owner Mode - Negative Funds

I, like everyone who visits this thread has experienced, have finished a season with a negative balance. When I came to this page, I was hoping to get some valuable guidance on correcting this problem, but the best answer I saw was to create a new owner and keep moving forward. I thought that there had to be another way to accomplish this without doing that. So, I'm going to tell you what I did, and keep doing season after season.

Back in Time

Go to your saved files and look for a save point earlier in the season that had positive funds, or very little negative funds. If the funds are $20 million plus in the hole, keep going back. If you've turned off the salary cap, try to find a save point before that and start there, or just start over. Having no salary cap will kill your teams financial future.

Finances

The first thing you need to look at is the debt to income ratio each week. You make more money during home game weeks, and very little on away game weeks. For the next couple of seasons, you will need to look at all of your pricing weekly until you get them adjusted to maximum profits.

1: Ticket Pricing Stadiums have four levels of seating. You will need to adjust the prices of each level until you get the highest amount of money per seat, and still selling all of the tickets. I have found that no matter how good or bad the team is, if you keep the ticket prices in the good value range, they will almost always sellout.

2. Merchandise In this section you have three categories, Team Apparel, Jerseys, and Memorabilia. They give you the average league price for each item, so the goal here is to be cheaper than the average, but not too cheap. What you'll want to do is, write down the total number of sales you do each week per item and the total revenue, and find the price that your market will pay that nets you the highest amount of revenue.

3. Concessions In concessions, you have five categories of food ratings. As in merchandising, you will need to monitor you sales from week to week and tweak the prices till you get the most revenue for each product. Follow the same procedure as merchandise for this section.

4. Team Revenue Team Revenue gives you a basic breakdown of the weeks income and expenses. (Unlike some past Madden games where you more detailed breakdowns of the team finances).

Ideally, you want to get your team in a position that it is making $50 million in profit at the end of every season. So on the last day of the season, you should have $50 million more than the season before.

Players

Remember that you are in Owner Mode. As an owner, you can't get attached to players. If you do, which if you are reading this that's probably the case, it will cost your team money. It is important to do your research before signing a new player, or resigning a player. Sometimes a really good player demands more than his market value, and a simple franchise tag could have saved you millions on the cap space. Other times you can find a player a few overall points lower at a much cheaper price. It is very easy to replace players on this game, so never overpay a player no matter how young and high his overall rating is.

Resigning Players

Wait till week 17 before negotiating a player’s contract. Then go to manage roster/re-sign players section and start negotiating from there. You can keep negotiating till you either sign them, they say they are not interested, or you want to end negotiation.

As I stated before, do your research before resigning a player. Look at what other teams are paying for that position and overall rating. Factor in the players age in the negotiation. Never commit more than $10 million a year to a player. It's not worth the cap hit. If you do this, you will find yourself in cap trouble a few seasons down the road. And as much as possible, do not give bonuses to players.

Free Agents

There are two ways to sign free agents. One is during the season, and the other is after the post season end. During the season, you can only sign players to a one year contract, so be smart about the players you sign. If that player is just to fill in for an injured player, don't sign a high dollar player. Find one that is less the $1 million for the year and sign him. That way once the injured player returns you can cut the replacement with no or very low cap penalty.

If you are signing free agents in the offseason, never sign the big name FA's. They cost too much, and that hole in the roster can easily be filled with a lower rated and cheaper player. As much as possible, only fill backup roles with FA's. If you are consistently building your teams with FA's, you will never build a real quality team with depth at each position. The only thing you will accomplish is, have a great time for a couple of season, then a major cap problem as you try to keep good players.

Drafting Players

Drafting players is very important. In Madden 25, it's very hard to draft good players after the 4th round. Usually the only players left are rated D or F, and they very seldom develop into quality players. A good approach is to trade the later round pick for early round picks. That way you are only drafting players who will develop and be quality contributors to your team.

Staff

Selecting your staff is also very important. Hire the highest rated coach, scout, and trainer you can.

Head Coach Hire the coach that best fits your teams build. This is very important in how players perform and develop. If your coach doesn't fit the teams build and the system the player best fits, it will only set your organization back.

Scout When hiring a scout, you want the highest rated one available. Lower ranked scouts will give you bad information on the players you scout for the draft. You could go into the draft thinking a player is an A or B overall, then see that he was really a C or D once he's on the roster. Now that first round pick, you are paying top dollar to is a wasted pick and not worth the contract.

Trainer The trainer, from what I've seen really makes no significant different. I've had low ranked and high ranked trainers, and the difference was a matter of one week in the recovery. But since you do get slightly faster recovery times, and it in theory raises the chances of getting injured, it's best to get the highest ranked trainer.

Stadiums

In order to keep your fans happy and your sales as high as possible, you need to keep your stadium up. Now, when you do that, that money comes out of your funds, so you need to make sure that you can afford the upgrade before making it.

If you are thinking of building a new stadium, know that you will be paying around $2 million a week for 20 years. That may not seem like much, but that works out to be $68 million a season. You pay that during preseason, regular season, the playoffs, and the entire off season. Over 20 years, you've paid $1.36 billion for that stadium

My suggestion to you is, renovate the stadium you have as much as possible. Do those renovations during the off season, and never take your funds below $30 million.

My philosophy

I went from being $10 million in the hole, to now having $1.1 billion in funds over 23 seasons. And here is how I accomplished it:

1. Build through the draft.

2. Trade high rated players for at least 2 draft picks.

3. After FA, but before the draft, trade your later round picks for first round picks. I never draft past the 2nd round. On average, I draft 3-4 players a year, and they are always quality players, and mostly all instant starters.

4. I don't do bonuses. If I lose the player, oh well. I will get one in the draft.

5. Never sign FA's as starters. If I need a starter, I always draft that player. You get them cheap and they develop very quickly.

6. Only sign FA's to fill backup roles and never spend more than $2 million a season for that player.

7. Never pay over $9 million a year for a single player. Again, you can replace that player in the draft for a lot cheaper.

8. I never get into bidding wars for FA's. I only make my offer and let the chips fall where they may.

9. I never sign CB's during the FA's signing period. If you wait till the start of preseason, you will find several rated over 80 that you can get cheap.

10. I keep my team young. If a player is close to or over 30, I try to replace him. If I have to resign him, I only do it one year at a time.

11. When resigning backup players, if they ask for a one year contract under $1 million, I try to sign them for three or more at that same price.

12. I never sign players to contracts higher than the tag price. You will see OL players wanting $10 plus million a year contracts, but their tag price is around $6 million.

13. I always allow the CPU to progress my players. It always distributes the points in a way to make the player better.

14. I never delegate roster moves to the CPU. It never picks the best trades or players, and it will almost always cut the wrong players.

15. Never draft players you haven't scouted. Although you may get luck from time to time, chances are, the player will be **bleep** and get cut.

16. When all the scouted players are gone in the draft. Trade the remaining picks away for picks in the next draft.

17. Always fully scout players. Get their rating, and whatever attribute you look for in a player for the position.

18. Think all personnel moves through thoroughly. Contracts effect your cap space for more than just the following season.

19. Select your media responses carefully. They do have an effect on your team and your players.

20. Never spend all your cap money. I tend to stay $15 million under the cap every season. This insures you don't get into cap trouble down the road.

This is how I run my organization, and now on year 2036, I have $1.1 billion in funds. I have the number one team in all categories, and 11 Super Bowl wins. I do not play every game, because me real interest is in building the team. I like to play the first preseason game to see how my new players look. I usually play the first regular season game. Then I sim all the rest to the games. If we make it to the Super Bowl, I usually play it, but not always.

Re: Madden 25 Owner Mode - Negative Funds

I, like everyone who visits this thread has experienced, have finished a season with a negative balance. When I came to this page, I was hoping to get some valuable guidance on correcting this problem, but the best answer I saw was to create a new owner and keep moving forward. I thought that there had to be another way to accomplish this without doing that. So, I'm going to tell you what I did, and keep doing season after season.

Back in Time

Go to your saved files and look for a save point earlier in the season that had positive funds, or very little negative funds. If the funds are $20 million plus in the hole, keep going back. If you've turned off the salary cap, try to find a save point before that and start there, or just start over. Having no salary cap will kill your teams financial future.

Finances

The first thing you need to look at is the debt to income ratio each week. You make more money during home game weeks, and very little on away game weeks. For the next couple of seasons, you will need to look at all of your pricing weekly until you get them adjusted to maximum profits.

1: Ticket Pricing Stadiums have four levels of seating. You will need to adjust the prices of each level until you get the highest amount of money per seat, and still selling all of the tickets. I have found that no matter how good or bad the team is, if you keep the ticket prices in the good value range, they will almost always sellout.

2. Merchandise In this section you have three categories, Team Apparel, Jerseys, and Memorabilia. They give you the average league price for each item, so the goal here is to be cheaper than the average, but not too cheap. What you'll want to do is, write down the total number of sales you do each week per item and the total revenue, and find the price that your market will pay that nets you the highest amount of revenue.

3. Concessions In concessions, you have five categories of food ratings. As in merchandising, you will need to monitor you sales from week to week and tweak the prices till you get the most revenue for each product. Follow the same procedure as merchandise for this section.

4. Team Revenue Team Revenue gives you a basic breakdown of the weeks income and expenses. (Unlike some past Madden games where you more detailed breakdowns of the team finances).

Ideally, you want to get your team in a position that it is making $50 million in profit at the end of every season. So on the last day of the season, you should have $50 million more than the season before.

Players

Remember that you are in Owner Mode. As an owner, you can't get attached to players. If you do, which if you are reading this that's probably the case, it will cost your team money. It is important to do your research before signing a new player, or resigning a player. Sometimes a really good player demands more than his market value, and a simple franchise tag could have saved you millions on the cap space. Other times you can find a player a few overall points lower at a much cheaper price. It is very easy to replace players on this game, so never overpay a player no matter how young and high his overall rating is.

Resigning Players

Wait till week 17 before negotiating a player’s contract. Then go to manage roster/re-sign players section and start negotiating from there. You can keep negotiating till you either sign them, they say they are not interested, or you want to end negotiation.

As I stated before, do your research before resigning a player. Look at what other teams are paying for that position and overall rating. Factor in the players age in the negotiation. Never commit more than $10 million a year to a player. It's not worth the cap hit. If you do this, you will find yourself in cap trouble a few seasons down the road. And as much as possible, do not give bonuses to players.

Free Agents

There are two ways to sign free agents. One is during the season, and the other is after the post season end. During the season, you can only sign players to a one year contract, so be smart about the players you sign. If that player is just to fill in for an injured player, don't sign a high dollar player. Find one that is less the $1 million for the year and sign him. That way once the injured player returns you can cut the replacement with no or very low cap penalty.

If you are signing free agents in the offseason, never sign the big name FA's. They cost too much, and that hole in the roster can easily be filled with a lower rated and cheaper player. As much as possible, only fill backup roles with FA's. If you are consistently building your teams with FA's, you will never build a real quality team with depth at each position. The only thing you will accomplish is, have a great time for a couple of season, then a major cap problem as you try to keep good players.

Drafting Players

Drafting players is very important. In Madden 25, it's very hard to draft good players after the 4th round. Usually the only players left are rated D or F, and they very seldom develop into quality players. A good approach is to trade the later round pick for early round picks. That way you are only drafting players who will develop and be quality contributors to your team.

Staff

Selecting your staff is also very important. Hire the highest rated coach, scout, and trainer you can.

Head Coach Hire the coach that best fits your teams build. This is very important in how players perform and develop. If your coach doesn't fit the teams build and the system the player best fits, it will only set your organization back.

Scout When hiring a scout, you want the highest rated one available. Lower ranked scouts will give you bad information on the players you scout for the draft. You could go into the draft thinking a player is an A or B overall, then see that he was really a C or D once he's on the roster. Now that first round pick, you are paying top dollar to is a wasted pick and not worth the contract.

Trainer The trainer, from what I've seen really makes no significant different. I've had low ranked and high ranked trainers, and the difference was a matter of one week in the recovery. But since you do get slightly faster recovery times, and it in theory raises the chances of getting injured, it's best to get the highest ranked trainer.

Stadiums

In order to keep your fans happy and your sales as high as possible, you need to keep your stadium up. Now, when you do that, that money comes out of your funds, so you need to make sure that you can afford the upgrade before making it.

If you are thinking of building a new stadium, know that you will be paying around $2 million a week for 20 years. That may not seem like much, but that works out to be $68 million a season. You pay that during preseason, regular season, the playoffs, and the entire off season. Over 20 years, you've paid $1.36 billion for that stadium

My suggestion to you is, renovate the stadium you have as much as possible. Do those renovations during the off season, and never take your funds below $30 million.

My philosophy

I went from being $10 million in the hole, to now having $1.1 billion in funds over 23 seasons. And here is how I accomplished it:

1. Build through the draft.

2. Trade high rated players for at least 2 draft picks.

3. After FA, but before the draft, trade your later round picks for first round picks. I never draft past the 2nd round. On average, I draft 3-4 players a year, and they are always quality players, and mostly all instant starters.

4. I don't do bonuses. If I lose the player, oh well. I will get one in the draft.

5. Never sign FA's as starters. If I need a starter, I always draft that player. You get them cheap and they develop very quickly.

6. Only sign FA's to fill backup roles and never spend more than $2 million a season for that player.

7. Never pay over $9 million a year for a single player. Again, you can replace that player in the draft for a lot cheaper.

8. I never get into bidding wars for FA's. I only make my offer and let the chips fall where they may.

9. I never sign CB's during the FA's signing period. If you wait till the start of preseason, you will find several rated over 80 that you can get cheap.

10. I keep my team young. If a player is close to or over 30, I try to replace him. If I have to resign him, I only do it one year at a time.

11. When resigning backup players, if they ask for a one year contract under $1 million, I try to sign them for three or more at that same price.

12. I never sign players to contracts higher than the tag price. You will see OL players wanting $10 plus million a year contracts, but their tag price is around $6 million.

13. I always allow the CPU to progress my players. It always distributes the points in a way to make the player better.

14. I never delegate roster moves to the CPU. It never picks the best trades or players, and it will almost always cut the wrong players.

15. Never draft players you haven't scouted. Although you may get luck from time to time, chances are, the player will be **bleep** and get cut.

16. When all the scouted players are gone in the draft. Trade the remaining picks away for picks in the next draft.

17. Always fully scout players. Get their rating, and whatever attribute you look for in a player for the position.

18. Think all personnel moves through thoroughly. Contracts effect your cap space for more than just the following season.

19. Select your media responses carefully. They do have an effect on your team and your players.

20. Never spend all your cap money. I tend to stay $15 million under the cap every season. This insures you don't get into cap trouble down the road.

This is how I run my organization, and now on year 2036, I have $1.1 billion in funds. I have the number one team in all categories, and 11 Super Bowl wins. I do not play every game, because me real interest is in building the team. I like to play the first preseason game to see how my new players look. I usually play the first regular season game. Then I sim all the rest to the games. If we make it to the Super Bowl, I usually play it, but not always.